Amon Tobin – Dark Jovian

The Brazilian sound virtuoso Amon Adonai Santos de Araújo Tobin, classified by many as one of the world’s leading Electronic musicians and a classic IDM artist of the nineties, has released nine full-length albums on Ninja Tune (not to mention the long list of EPs and Singles), his last full-length album and an EP being released in 2011. This his latest release goes into the EP category, with five songs and three remixes or reshapes (of three of those five songs).

The EP starts with “Dark Jovian”, which features beautiful, massive, Drony but thick waves of Noisy sound, lower pulsating and higher synths, totally Electronic in nature, crashing in on us with immense intensity, like a breathing organism that is some weird synthetic alien planet. Beautiful choirs join the dramatic scenery towards the end, before the song fades away into “In Your Own Time”, a more calmer piece with ethereal melodies, awesome vintage moogy sounds, and vocoder-like choirs. The third song “Adrastea Contact” changes the atmosphere into a bit more classic IDM, Ambient and even Trance-oriented environments, yet using mainly the same soundscapes as the first two songs. The fourth song “Io” is a minimalistic and calm yet powerful eyeopener of an Ambient-track, bringing to mind the psychedelic interdimensional space-scenes of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. “Encounter On Io” finishes the main-part of the Ep with some jazzy (but simple) organ-stuff and weird insect-like effects, and when the beautiful choirs enter the picture once again, I’m getting strong feelings of a 60’ies artsy Sci-Fi-movie. Halfway through the song we are dragged into a darker and more hostile place for awhile, before ascending towards the surface again towards the end.

As mentioned above, the last three songs on the EP are remixes, which of course give cool perspectives to the songs, with slight changes in the soundscapes, and for example additional beats in the song “In Your Own Time”.

This release is a fantastic display of the imagination of Amon Tobin, and a great reminder of why Electronic music will always be the platform of the future. If you are into vintage synth-sounds, quality Ambient and IDM, and Sci-Fi atmospheres, you gotta give this one a listen.